Pacific Ocean’s response to greenhouse gases could extend California drought for centuries

Clues from prehistoric droughts and arid periods in California show that today’s increasing greenhouse gas levels could lock the state into drought for centuries, according to a study led by UCLA professor Glen MacDonald. The study, published today in the Nature.com journal Scientific Reports, looked at how natural climatic forces contributed to centuries-long and even millennia-long periods of dryness in California …

Ten Degrees Above Average, Alaska is Having Its Hottest Year Since Records Began

Like the rest of the world, Alaska has been unusually hot this year—and it’s about to get hotter. That’s according to the most recent data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as Climate Central reported. Between March and May of this year, the meteorological spring, the entire state has been about 10 degrees hotter than normal, with an average temperature …

Climate change could trigger tropical evacuations, researchers advise

Global warming by just 2 degrees Celsius is likely to force some tropical plant, animal and human populations to relocate hundreds of miles from their current homes this century, according to research published today in the journal Scientific Reports. Solomon Hsiang, Chancellor’s Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and Adam Sobel, a professor of applied physics …

Brian K Sullivan – The Strongest El Nino in Decades Is Going to Mess With Everything

It has choked Singapore with smoke, triggered Pacific typhoons and left Vietnamese coffee growers staring nervously at dwindling reservoirs. In Africa, cocoa farmers are blaming it for bad harvests, and in the Americas, it has Argentines bracing for lower milk production and Californians believing that rain is finally, mercifully on the way. Its effects are just beginning in much of …